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This article directly affects every shooter- please take notes
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Mental Health & The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Missoula, MT --(Ammoland.com)- This Thursday the Montana Legislature’s Law and Justice Interim Committee will hold a hearing to consider whether or not Montana should do more to capture mental health records and feed those into federal electronic systems, such as the NICS created by the Brady Law.

Here is my written testimony to the Law and Justice Interim Committee:

Montana Legislature
Law and Justice Interim Committee
National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and Mental Health
February 13, 2014

Testimony for Committee, by Gary Marbut, President Montana Shooting Sports Association

Will improved mental health evaluations, and data collection and reporting of mental health information decrease violence, especially gun-related violence?

I. Qualifications to provide information.

Mr. Marbut is accepted in state and federal courts in civil and criminal cases concerning firearms safety, use of force, legitimate self defense, and related topics. Mr. Marbut is an active self defense instructor and has graduated over 3,800 students from curriculae concerning Montana laws, and the tactics and methods of defense. Mr. Marbut is a member of the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors, and a follower of and sometimes contributor to the Force Science Research Center.

II. Precursor, background issues.

Before the question posed above can be effectively answered, some foundation issues must be addressed.

1. Are people with mental health issues commonly prone to future violence? No. A 2009 study found that individuals with mental health disorders no more likely to commit acts of violence than the rest of the population; rather, future violence was indicated by other factors, such as substance abuse and a prior history of such acts. One explanation is that some individuals with severe disorders are too disorganized or afraid to commit crimes. For example, individuals with severe schizophrenia may have delusions – for instance, a belief that they and others around them face a danger of attack or threat. This leads some persons suffering from this form of delusion to seclude themselves from the outside world and to express extreme caution toward others…
FBI ? Responding to Persons with Mental Illness: Can Screening Checklists Aid Law Enforcement

2. Is gun-related mass violence by persons with mental health issues increasing and is it a pressing national problem? No and no. Despite obsessive media reporting when such incidents occur, the number of those incidents and the number of victims claimed in those incidents remain static, this notwithstanding an increasing population size and increasing levels of gun ownership.
Criminologist Says Mass Murder In U.S. Is Declining | Here & Now

3. Is there an increased national murder rate that can be attributed to mental health failures? No. Actually, murder rates in the US are dramatically down, again despite increasing rates of firearms ownership, increasing population, and stressful economic times. Because overall murder rates, including murder rates with firearms, are in a definite downward trend, there is no rationale’ to claim increases because of people with mental health problems, or inadequate mental health reporting.
<broken link removed>

4. Is the state of the art in psychology capable of correctly identifying people with mental health problems who are prone to violence. No. This answer only repeats what many professionals and experts in the field of psychology insist, that the art of psychology simply does not possess the tools at this stage in the evolution of the art to accurately predict violence. Much better predictors of violence include drug use, and history of violence.
PsychLaw Journal, Max Wachtel, Ph.D.: Risk Assessment: How Psychologists Predict Future Violent Behavior
Predicting violent behavior: not quite guesswork, but far from certain - Los Angeles Times
“Skilled and practiced mental health professionals have gotten a lot better at predicting short- term dangerousness,” said Dr. Steven E. Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who consults with the Phoenix Police Department and directed the Columbine Psychiatric Autopsy Project after the 1999 school shootings. “But who’s going to commit violence in some unspecified future? You might as well consult a Ouija board.”

5. Is there any connection at all between mass shootings and mental health? Yes. Besides that we’d consider crazy any person who would take the lives of innocents, there is another connection between mass shootings and mental health. That connection is psychotropic drugs. All of the mass shootings in recent memory have been done by people who either were actively taking prescribed psychotropic drugs, or who were supposed to be taking psychotropic drugs but quit. In order to obtain these psychotropic drugs, these people perpetrating mass shootings were under the care of a mental health practitioner licensed to prescribe the drugs. See:
A Brief History of Psychotropic Drugs Prescribed to Mass Murderers | Los Alamos Daily Post
Shootings in Germany, Alabama Underscore Violent Side Effects of Psychiatric Medications
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6. Base Rate Fallacy. A well defined and important but little known phenomenon is base rate fallacy. It has to do as much with statistics than with psychology, but it is essential for psychology. There is an excellent article on Base Rate Fallacy in Wikipedia at:
Base rate fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anyone contemplating the issue of mental health and persistent mental health records would be wise to learn about and understand the concept of base rate fallacy.

The essence is this: Any widespread screening for a condition (e.g., mentally unstable person prone to violence) among the general population is guaranteed to turn up many more false positives than true positives, just because of an unavoidable error rate, which would be especially pronounced in the fuzzy field of psychology. The false positives would outnumber the true positives by one or more orders of magnitude. Thus, people not prone to violence would unavoidably be stigmatized and likely lose civil rights because of an error rate that cannot be eliminated. (THIS MEANS THE GENERAL POPULATION- THIS DIRECTLY AFFECTS YOU)

7. Persistent records/improper records non-correction. There are not good, affordable or comprehensive mechanisms in place or available to get persistent records corrected if a person is incorrectly identified as prone to violence, or if the person gets treatment and is cured of any tendency towards violence. This is especially true of the National Instant Check System (NICS). People who are marked on NICS as ineligible for firearms transfer find it difficult or impossible to get records corrected.

Summery of a Texas legal case is in order here (US v. Bean, 537 U.S. 77(2002) ). After attending a gun show in Texas, Thomas Bean drove to Mexico. When Mexican officials stopped his vehicle at the border, they found ammunition, and Bean was subsequently convicted in a Mexican court of importing ammunition. Because of his felony conviction, 18 USC section 922(g)(1) prohibited Bean from possessing, distributing, or receiving firearms or ammunition. Bean applied to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) for relief from his firearms disabilities, but the ATF returned the application unprocessed, explaining that its annual appropriations law forbade it from expending any funds to investigate or act upon applications such as Bean’s. Bean then filed suit, asking the District Court to conduct its own inquiry into his fitness to possess a gun and grant relief from his inability to possess, distribute, or receive firearms or ammunition.

In a unanimous opinion delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court held that the absence of an actual denial of Bean’s petition by ATF precludes judicial review. Because Bean’s application for relief from the firearms disabilities was not considered due to appropriation provisions, Justice Thomas reasoned that the court could not grant relief since the statute only permitted judicial review of an affirmative denial of an application.
Thus, Bean could not get his rights restored, notwithstanding that what he was convicted of in Mexico is not a crime in the US, simply because Congress had not funded the BATF’s process to correct records swept in from other countries, and restore Bean’s rights. Not only was Bean, a competitive trapshooter, unable to purchase new firearms, he was ineligible for life to possess any firearms he had previously purchased legally.
United States v. Bean | The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

8. Barking up the wrong tree; “Gun free zones.” Besides psychotropic drugs, the other common denominator for mass shootings in schools, theaters, and other places, is that they ALL happen in purported “gun free zones.” These alleged “gun free zones,” of course, are NEVER “gun free,” but only gun free for the victims. People bent on mayhem never respect “gun free zones.” In fact. perpetrators of mass violence seek out disarmed victim zones, for obvious reasons. Only those who respect the law and have no murderous intent comply with such silly zone rules and are thereby rendered defenseless. Thus, “alleged “gun free zones” are demonstrated to be very dangerous places, places where deranged perpetrators are assured of a resistance free killing field. Collection and sharing of mental health records will do nothing to address this glaring problem.

9. Will a system-reported mental health deficiency prevent deranged people from acquiring guns? No. Almost universally, those who have committed mass shootings have acquired the guns they used through means that would not be interdicted by a NICS check. A mental health disqualification for firearm purchase will only affect those who obtain guns through legal channels. That is, mental health evaluation and disqualification would have zero effect on the class of people intended for interdiction, perpetrators of mass shootings.

10. Will the prospective loss of civil rights dissuade possibly needy people from seeing mental health professionals? Yes. If there are people who need psychological intervention, the expected loss of their civil rights via data sharing will certainly persuade many of them to avoid any contact with the mental health community. See:
HHS Regs - Gun Owners of America

III. Conclusion

People with mental health issues have no greater rate of violence than the public at large. Any mental health search for violent people would assuredly turn up far more false positives than true positives (base rate fallacy). These people tagged because of false positives would likely be stripped of their civil rights for life, with no practical way to get their records cleared or revised following treatment. Within the arena of psychology, experts disagree about whether the art has evolved sufficiently to provide tools allowing practitioners to correctly predict an individual’s future violence. Even if the violent people could be identified and documented through mental health screenings, and disqualified from firearms purchase, that would not interdict the ability of such individuals to obtain guns and commit mayhem. Integrating mental health treatment with civil rights denial systems will persuade many people who may need treatment to avoid treatment. Nor would any such system address the dominant twin problems with mass shootings of psychotropic drugs and the low-hanging fruit for violent people of “gun free zones.”

Finally, there will be those who will respond with some version of, “… but if it saves just one life …” Criminologist professor Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million people in the US defend themselves every year with a firearm. In most cases the mere display of a firearm is sufficient to make assailants go away and save the defender, since Kleck says shots are fired in only 9% of these cases. Causing a significant percentage of these 2.5 million people to be disarmed (revisit base rate fallacy) would certainly end up costing far more lives than might be saved through the fuzzy and problematic process of mental health screening and records sharing.

Will improved mental health evaluations, and data collection and reporting of mental health information decrease violence, especially gun-related violence? No. But it can destroy the civil rights of too many innocent people in a fruitless quest to “do something.” That would be especially unfortunate and unwise if the “something” were so easily predictable to be contraindicated.

Gary Marbut, President
Montana Shooting Sports Association
Montana Shooting Sports Association
Author, Gun Laws of Montana
Montana Publishing

Gary Marbut, presidentMontana Shooting Sports Associationwww.mtssa.orgauthor, Gun Laws of Montanawww.mtpublish.com

About Montana Shooting Sports Association:MSSA is the primary political advocate for Montana gun owners. Visit: Montana Shooting Sports Association


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Heaven save us from self-styled experts in the field of psychology and mental health. I have read way too many articles like this wherein the author presents a mountain of BS in the form of a legal document, research paper, or geometric proof, invariably declaring matters of opinion or dispute as fact upon which he then builds a fortress of logical self-righteousness. Mr. Marbut is recognized by the Montana courts as a legal expert in very limited areas. That means that his opinion on certain gun related matters is admissible in court and will receive due consideration from a judge or jury in the decision making process. It does not mean that he knows anything about psychology, statistics, or the violently mentally ill. He states several things in his summary that either simply are not true, or are irrelevant:

1. "People with mental health issues have no greater rate of violence than the public at large."

This is patently silly. The issue here is the prevention of mass shootings, every one of which, in recent years, was perpetrated by someone who was violently mentally ill. Sane people do get mad and commit violence, but it's usually for understandable, if not admirable reasons. Insane people irrationally choose innocent victims, people who have done nothing to them upon which to wreak havoc. Every one of the recent shooters had people concerned for their safety and or the safety of others in their presence. Every one of them would have been involuntarily committed in the 1960s.

2. "Any mental health search for violent people would assuredly turn up far more false positives than true positives (base rate fallacy)."

Nobody I have heard of is talking about competency testing for normal individuals. Calls for mental health reporting that I have heard of specifically talk about reporting mental health adjudications (involuntary commitments) where a patient is represented by an attorney at a hearing presided over by a real judge. At this hearing, evidence is presented, witnesses testify, and the judge makes a decision. Please spare us the supposedly magical terms that "disprove" everything the author is arguing against (base rate fallacy).

3. "These people tagged because of false positives would likely be stripped of their civil rights for life, with no practical way to get their records cleared or revised following treatment."

"Likely"...not fact, just assumption and supposition. Do we really believe that any new law would provide no avenue for appeal?

4. "Within the arena of psychology, experts disagree about whether the art has evolved sufficiently to provide tools allowing practitioners to correctly predict an individual's future violence."

And then we have "..the art..." of psychology. We can't trust it because it's all fuzzy and nebulous. Nobody knows anything about anything in this field. It's all conjecture and guessing, in other words, "art". Well, let me, as someone who has a degree in psychology and has been to law school, clear the air a bit. Statistics is a rigorous mathematical specialty with several applications designed specifically for the field of psychology. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was designed specifically to answer the question whether two psychological phenomena are related to each other. It shows mathematically that certain classes of insane individuals are more violent than other people.

5. "Even if the violent people could be identified and documented through mental health screenings, and disqualified from firearms purchase, that would not interdict the ability of such individuals to obtain guns and commit mayhem."

The proposals I've seen call for tracking those who have been committed to mental institutions because of violent behavior, or the probability of violent behavior. Here we are talking about the guy who chases his wife down the street with a meat cleaver while naked and painted blue. He's stopped by the police and taken to an in-patient, locked down mental health facility. There's no doubt about his sanity or his propensity for violence. But even so, he still gets a hearing before a judge, and a chance to present his case. These are the people we are talking about when we say "disqualified due to mental health issues."

6. "Integrating mental health treatment with civil rights denial systems will persuade many people who may need treatment to avoid treatment."

The people we're talking about above don't voluntarily seek treatment anyway. That's why they are involuntarily committed.

7. "Nor would any such system address the dominant twin problems with mass shootings of psychotropic drugs and the low-hanging fruit for violent people of 'gun free zones.'"

Since the days of Reagan's governorship in CA those psychotropic drugs have been the band aid applied to those who should have been incarcerated as violently mentally ill. The idea was that if we kept them drugged up they could wander the streets with the rest of us. That was supposed to save us a bunch of tax money and balance the state budget by closing the mental hospitals. It's not the fault of the drugs. It's the fault of a system that expects violently insane people to self-administer their own medications.

"Gun Free Zones" are the sole issue upon which the author gets it correct. Violently insane people who contemplate irrational violence against innocent people seek out victims who are powerless against them. You might as well erect "Open Season" signs. Aside from this last point, the author is arguing against a bogey man that nobody is seriously advocating. Had we had effective, locked down, inpatient mental health facilities for the past 20 years, people like Loughner and every one the other mass shooters would not have been able to pass a background check because they would have been locked up.

It's articles like this that hurt gun owners. Articles like this insure that shooters like the ones in CT, VA, CO, and AZ will continue to crop up and perpetrate irrational random violence on innocent victims. Those incidents, though rare, are sensational and inspire terror in the American populace due to their very randomness and irrationality. The people then demand that "somebody DO something", even if it's wrong, even if it punishes law abiding gun owners, even if it violates the Constitution. If we value our gun rights we need to get the violently mentally ill off the streets, as they were in 1960, and we need to make sure that such people are in the existing background check system.
 
Very well- your points are well taken. Now where is your data to refute his opinion and what does your resume look like so we can do a peer review? After all; are we not your peers on this forum?

Personally, I don't think you can- because if you could, you would have read the part where the government could list every firearm owner including yourself as potentially psychotic and using that as a medical legal basis could confiscate every firearm you have. You missed that very serious, and important sentence- I know its there, because I'm the one that put it in parenthesis behind the part of the outline where they would do this.

So please at your leisure do a point by point rebuttal cross referenced to your supporting documentation to support your opinion. After all, that is what you have asked this gentleman to do; its only fair that you are held to the same high standards isn't it?

I highly doubt you can do this; based on the mental patients I have personally observed they'd rather be left alone and the straight stastics do support his opinion.

I do know of one this where you are incorrect: The TSA's "DO NOT FLY LIST" cannot be challenged because it is all controlled by a secret court. There has been people abandoned overseas now for 5 years or longer because they can't get back into the United States, they cannot challenge the court because its secret so they're caught in a "catch 22"- here is one such article: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-co...m-program-challenged-former-stanford-doctoral

Just curious- is all of your research this flawed? If you missed this example which has been going on now for at least 5 years, where is the rest of your research to support your conclusions?
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Personally, I don't think you can- because if you could, you would have read the part where the government could list every firearm owner including yourself as potentially psychotic and using that as a medical legal basis could confiscate every firearm you have. You missed that very serious, and important sentence- I know its there, because I'm the one that put it in parenthesis behind the part of the outline where they would do this.

Try to follow along. NOBODY is seriously suggesting that there is some magical test that could be given to all prospective gun buyers. NOBODY is suggesting that we test all gun buyers, even if we could find a test to use. My point (which you are totally ignoring) is that in the past, when we had effective state run mental hospitals, people like the ones who have perpetrated the last 10 mass shootings, were reported by friends, family, co-workers, or law enforcement as behaving erratically, violently, or illegally. Instead of being handed some pills they were locked up for further observation and treatment. I know because I was there, working in the mental health industry in those days.

I'm not going to engage in a pissing contest about irrelevant arguments with people who don't know what they are talking about. Realize this: If we do not get these people off the streets, and they continue to terrorize the populace we WILL lose our gun rights under the law. It's that simple. Every time a violently insane person kills a classroom full of kindergartners, or a theater full of families we will see another emotionally driven assault on the 2nd Amendment, and sooner or later one of them will be successful. Oh yes, argue all you want about how we can't use any level of mental illness as a disqualifier. Maintain the status quo. As Fritz Perls (look him up, hotshot) would ask, "How's your present situation working out for you then?" Seems to me we're in deep trouble, pal.
 
I will do one bit of research for you. Fritz Perls once sat across a desk from an incarcerated felon who regaled Perls with stories of his power over his own life, and everyone else's. He told Perls that nobody could tell him what to do. Nobody could stop him from doing what he wanted to do. His philosophy was to live free or die. He didn't care about the consequences of his actions, only that he was his own master. Perls looked at him and said quietly, "And yet, here you sit in a place where you are told when to get up, what to wear, when and what to eat, where you may go, and when to go to bed. How well is this working for you?" And yes, Dr. Phil "borrowed" this approach from him.
 
OK- I agree with you. This post you've made is far shorter, more succulent, more well thought out and makes sense.


Try to follow along. NOBODY is seriously suggesting that there is some magical test that could be given to all prospective gun buyers. NOBODY is suggesting that we test all gun buyers, even if we could find a test to use. My point (which you are totally ignoring) is that in the past, when we had effective state run mental hospitals, people like the ones who have perpetrated the last 10 mass shootings, were reported by friends, family, co-workers, or law enforcement as behaving erratically, violently, or illegally. Instead of being handed some pills they were locked up for further observation and treatment. I know because I was there, working in the mental health industry in those days.

I'm not going to engage in a pissing contest about irrelevant arguments with people who don't know what they are talking about. Realize this: If we do not get these people off the streets, and they continue to terrorize the populace we WILL lose our gun rights under the law. It's that simple. Every time a violently insane person kills a classroom full of kindergartners, or a theater full of families we will see another emotionally driven assault on the 2nd Amendment, and sooner or later one of them will be successful. Oh yes, argue all you want about how we can't use any level of mental illness as a disqualifier. Maintain the status quo. As Fritz Perls (look him up, hotshot) would ask, "How's your present situation working out for you then?" Seems to me we're in deep trouble, pal.
 
There's been many different approaches to interviewing those who have unique perspectives. Massad Ayoob's description of how he would do interviews in the book "The Truth about Self Defense" is certainly effective as he would interview those he called "werewolves" who responded to drugs, not the phases of the moon before they would change. I think he's right


I will do one bit of research for you. Fritz Perls once sat across a desk from an incarcerated felon who regaled Perls with stories of his power over his own life, and everyone else's. He told Perls that nobody could tell him what to do. Nobody could stop him from doing what he wanted to do. His philosophy was to live free or die. He didn't care about the consequences of his actions, only that he was his own master. Perls looked at him and said quietly, "And yet, here you sit in a place where you are told when to get up, what to wear, when and what to eat, where you may go, and when to go to bed. How well is this working for you?" And yes, Dr. Phil "borrowed" this approach from him.
 
Sorry about the snarkiness, but this article pushed my button for the 50th time, and all the pent up frustration just spilled out. I've been saying for years that the psychotic mass shooters are functionally terrorists, and they unwittingly work for the anti-gun lobby. They have a slightly different motivation than most terrorists, but the consequences of their actions produce the same political results. They are doing for guns what the Islamic terrorists did for airplanes and airports.

The problem is that these dangerous psychotics are permitted to roam freely, rather than being locked up (as they were decades ago). As long as they do roam freely, every time one of them blows up we will have to defend ourselves and our gun rights just as we did last year. Sooner or later we won't be successful. So it's imperative that we stop these terrorists before we lose the war. We need an effective system of involuntary commitment for dangerously mentally ill people. That would have stopped each and every one of these terrorist acts. Look no further than the nearest airport and the TSA goons guarding it if you want to know what is in our future as far as gun rights if we don't address this problem right now.

That said, I have little tolerance for people who argue that any move to tighten mental health standards is a threat to all gun owners. That argument, if it persists, will get us exactly where the anti-gun people want us.
 
I've been saying for years that the psychotic mass shooters are functionally terrorists, and they unwittingly work for the anti-gun lobby. They have a slightly different motivation than most terrorists, but the consequences of their actions produce the same political results. They are doing for guns what the Islamic terrorists did for airplanes and airports.

The problem is that these dangerous psychotics are permitted to roam freely, rather than being locked up (as they were decades ago). As long as they do roam freely, every time one of them blows up we will have to defend ourselves and our gun rights just as we did last year. Sooner or later we won't be successful. So it's imperative that we stop these terrorists before we lose the war. We need an effective system of involuntary commitment for dangerously mentally ill people.

Question: how would you identify these people? Granted if they had a history such as the Sandy Hook shooter I could see it- in other words, a track record of in and out

Someday, we will lose. It will happen since we are heading towards a one world government and that government will be created by baby steps by treaty and the signing away of civil rights on an international level one small step at a time- you can see this happening today (secular view) and it was foretold by various religious (religious view) I am being non-specific for a reason because I don't want to cause a fire storm. This is one time where both beliefs do agree is all I am saying.
 
These people self-identify. As I said, they are found one day running down the street with their naked bodies painted blue, while waving a meat cleaver. Now, that was a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration, but they do self-identify in very obvious ways. Lanza had an irrational blow-up with the school sometime prior to his shooting spree. He exhibited all kinds of evidence of being a dangerous person. Loughner had people trying to get him involuntarily committed. The VA Tech shooter had known serious issues getting along in society. It's not hard to identify these people. People who exhibited these kinds of behaviors in the past were committed by relatives and law enforcement. People rarely go from being Joe Normal to Charles Manson overnight. There are stops along the way, and usually, either family or law enforcement gets involved way before they reach flame-out status. The problem these days is that when these people show up on the radar as being potentially dangerous there's no system to deal with them, so they get sent home in the custody of family with a pocket full of pills. That needs to stop.
 
These people self-identify. As I said, they are found one day running down the street with their naked bodies painted blue, while waving a meat cleaver. Now, that was a tongue-in-cheek exaggeration, but they do self-identify in very obvious ways. Lanza had an irrational blow-up with the school sometime prior to his shooting spree. He exhibited all kinds of evidence of being a dangerous person. Loughner had people trying to get him involuntarily committed. The VA Tech shooter had known serious issues getting along in society. It's not hard to identify these people. People who exhibited these kinds of behaviors in the past were committed by relatives and law enforcement. People rarely go from being Joe Normal to Charles Manson overnight. There are stops along the way, and usually, either family or law enforcement gets involved way before they reach flame-out status. The problem these days is that when these people show up on the radar as being potentially dangerous there's no system to deal with them, so they get sent home in the custody of family with a pocket full of pills. That needs to stop.

This is true- like you said, there's usually a "track incidence record" before the "go out with a stupid selfish bang".

Please forgive me of saying this- but this really is President Ronald Regans fault. I'm not kidding- my 2nd wife was working as a pschologist's aid with her Bachelor of Science in psych and then Regan cut ALL funding- all those people who were being treated were released out to the public because it was a violation of their rights to be committed without due process.

Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the worst of them become homeless then self medicate using street drugs or alcohol. The REALLY bad ones end up as a part of the penal system- but, since prisons are now run for profit instead of by the state those people are intentionally denied the mental health care they need so the company can make a profit! Several of them have committed suicide because of it. The last,,,oh,,,2 to 5% of the left over's are treated at home, kept at home by parents or other family members (I'm guessing on the actual percentage but it can't be very high).

Even if its one in 10,000 that's still too many shooters. Even one in 1,000,000 is still too high. Right now the percentage is about 1 in 140,000,000 per year- give or take a bit and now we're getting into the deep grey area. I mean the "deep grey area" are those people who managed to drop through the system. I mean the people where the care takers made a HUMAN mistake of misjudging a psychotic episode that turned ugly. Between the SYSTEM failings (Jail's for profits, not treating, remember?) and the care takers HUMAN mistakes (7500 people die a year from firearms; 195,000 medical malpractice deaths per year) we have to put this in perspective.

When was the last time you saw a doctor arrested for malpractice? Usually the highest suicide rate of doctors is by dentists because of the pain they see in their patients.

There is room for improvement; such as the local government being held accountable for the subcontractor used at the local prison or jail. (Gee, anyone remember a shooting at a Navy Base in Washington, DC because Contractors wanted to save a few bucks?)

I know these figures sound as cold as laying in a frozen puddle of ice on the 300 yard line and I'm sorry if I come across as an ***- but from the "big picture perspective" its really hard to apply corrective action.

Since I'm brain damaged- and I'm the first to admit it- I study this stuff very seriously because I don't want to lose my firearms rights.

But yes, I do agree there's certainly room for improvement.
 
So a couple people a year go off... Out of 300,000,000+ people in the United States how do you find that 1 in a hundred million lottery ticket and stop it from shooting a public place up? And i know there have been more shootings than that in the past year but dont go adding the persons that picked 1 or 2 people to kill but did it in a public place. I am only referring to MASS SHOOTINGS not PUBLIC SHOOTINGS. There is a huge difference
 
So a couple people a year go off... Out of 300,000,000+ people in the United States how do you find that 1 in a hundred million lottery ticket and stop it from shooting a public place up? And i know there have been more shootings than that in the past year but dont go adding the persons that picked 1 or 2 people to kill but did it in a public place. I am only referring to MASS SHOOTINGS not PUBLIC SHOOTINGS. There is a huge difference

And that difference is,,,,? Shooting people in public usually involves a lot of people right? And Mass shootings would at least seem to imply a lot of people. So what's the difference? I don't get it
 
I was working in the California State mental health system in the late 1960s when Reagan declared everybody well and sent them home. We had people on our locked-down wards who regularly destroyed whole restrooms (broken porcelain fixtures, mirrors pried off walls with their fingers), people who attacked staff, and people who obviously were in no condition to take care of themselves. These people were declared competent and safe, and sent home to relatives, or moved into flophouse hotels on General Assistance (welfare). They were assigned to outpatient treatment centers where they were expected to keep weekly appointments and manage their own medications. Nearly all of them became homeless, and the worst of them ended up in jail. Jail then became a revolving door where they would be arrested for something like indecent exposure, jailed for 30 to 60 days, then released, only to show up a few days later for another offense. No treatment, no case management, just in and out of jail constantly at the taxpayer's expense.

At the time that Reagan did this I predicted that we would see a huge increase in gruesome crimes like murder. It was not more than 3 months before an ex-patient was arrested for killing his mother and cutting her body up in the bathtub with a chainsaw. I had one patient who talked to imaginary friends. He had been a pro wrestler before he was committed. A few months after he was released I saw him standing on a street corner in skid row, talking to his imaginary friend, and holding a paper bag in one hand. I wouldn't want to have looked in the bag. Neither would I want to be anywhere around if he got his hands on a loaded gun.
 
I do not think that it was all Reagans fault. I have read a lot about the localization of mental health institutions. Reagan may very well have been the largest pusher of this in the beginning but he has not been governor of CA for a very long time. Absolutely NOTHING has been done to mitigate this problem in CA for 50 years. All Democrat years I might add.
 
These people were declared competent and safe, and sent home to relatives, or moved into flophouse hotels on General Assistance (welfare). They were assigned to outpatient treatment centers where they were expected to keep weekly appointments and manage their own medications. Nearly all of them became homeless, and the worst of them ended up in jail. Jail then became a revolving door where they would be arrested for something like indecent exposure, jailed for 30 to 60 days, then released, only to show up a few days later for another offense. No treatment, no case management, just in and out of jail constantly at the taxpayer's expense.

A few months after he was released I saw him standing on a street corner in skid row, talking to his imaginary friend, and holding a paper bag in one hand. I wouldn't want to have looked in the bag. Neither would I want to be anywhere around if he got his hands on a loaded gun.

You're right Zig- I am not arguing with you ok? We're on the same side in fact. My question is: where do you draw the line between those who are potentially violent (high risk) and those who are simply depressed from the death of a child or spouse and has been temporarily put on Zoloft/Prozac as a temporary assist to help get over the grieving process? Somewhere between those two extremes is the truth. As I understand it- the antigunners would use any form of psychiatric treatment as grounds to deny their firearms rights. However- the last time they tried to apply such "logic" (I use that term loosely) it involved domestic violence as misdemeanors- and all of a sudden all these police officers beating up their wifes came to light- and that line of thinking was quickly "broomed under the carpet" as it were.
Sure its listed right there on the BATFE 4473 question's 11 item H and I specifically acknowledge this.

In this case, the NRA and the ACLU should work together to hammer out what is permissible and what is not permissible. Something should be done from the mental health end of the spectrum- and I'd bet a 6 pack of your favorite adult beverage and $5 that says the Republicans would complain simply because they're Republicans, and the Democrats would complain for the same reason- resulting in nothing being accomplished and people still in potential danger.
 
Maybe this is the answer, Zig: No treatment, no case management, just in and out of jail constantly at the taxpayer's expense.

If the person is religious and complies as ordered on the treatment and case management? This is my reasoning of why I tell people I'm brain damaged. All of my case management, everything I write, everything I do would be used in a court room against me if I ever had to use a firearm in self-defense. Knowing that I have intentionally left a trail of my reasoning and thinking to intentionally disprove any murder charge.

When I went to Paralegal school- and anyone who has watched "Law and Order" knows the first thing the suspect has to have is "motive". The second thing is "opportunity", the third is "ability", and the fourth is "the payoff". Seldom does any case- criminal or civil- fall neatly with these 4 "legs" to hold up a case. So, my "business plan" as it were is to premediate building as many "legs" to hold up my "end" of any legal battle Knowing this in advance? Of course I'm held to a far higher standard than "Joe Average". Joe Average doesn't normally go to NRA firearm classes- especially instructor classes. Joe Average usually doesn't have a concealed firearms permit- in Washington state, there's roughly 360,000 permit holders out of some 7.5 MILLION people= which comes out slightly less than 1 person in 21 people have a permit.

Remember if you ever have to use a firearm in self defense you're fighting two battles (quoting from Ayoob Massad) the first battle is the gunfight- and even if you win, the perp's family will sue you in civil court and that's your second battle.

To quote from Sun Tzu, the Art of War: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” and “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”.

I want so much documentation that the Prosecutor will think 3 to 5 times about trying to make a criminal case. I want sufficient evidence to show in a COUNTER Civil Suit that I can have the perp's civil suit dismissed with cause- the point of avoiding a war before it even starts.
 

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